Train Ride

I take Amtrak between Albany-Rensselaer and New York City several times a month. I did the run yesterday. The ride down featured a good bald eagle siting, while on the trip back, I watched a beautiful sunset over the Catskills. And in both directions, the train ran on time. But that’s still a problem. Because it takes so long.

From Rensselaer to Poughkeepsie, the train moves along, but then it slows down and just seems to crawl into Manhattan. That must be figured into the schedule, because we made it as advertised. This is a line people use – Rensselaer is the tenth most used Amtrak station in the country. But it could be so much better. Speed up the trains, bring back the café cars, and more people will ride more often, putting more money into the system to use to make it better.

That’s one reason I was excited by President Obama’s one-two punch this week – his labor day speech in Milwaukee, and the follow-up yesterday in Cleveland. If he succeeds in moving his $50 billion transportation infrastructure and jobs creation plan through Congress – admittedly, a difficult proposition – it will have a big impact on the economy of Upstate New York. It could make a difference in the way we get around.

Not all the plan sounds good. We already have enough roads. But the part about investing in rail and public transportation does. The President’s goal is to invest enough to construct and maintain 4,000 miles of rail over the next six years. Hopefully some of that will be available to make existing rail lines work better.

Other parts of the proposal include: the establishment of an Infrastructure Bank to leverage federal dollars that can be more efficiently directed to regional projects; the integration of high-speed rail – around here, we would settle for some higher-speed rail – to an equal footing in the federal surface transportation program; and, says the White House, the “streamlining, modernizing, and prioritizing of surface transportation investments, consolidating more than 100 different programs.”

The National Apollo Alliance likes the part of the plan that gives preferences in competitive grant programs to transportation infrastructure investments that purchase transit vehicles and equipment with higher-than-required domestic content. That’s another benefit for New York. Because of our extensive use of subways and buses, especially in the New York metropolitan area, Upstate still has a transit-related manufacturing legacy. It hasn’t all gone overseas yet, and with some investment and effort, expanding that sector could provide the economic lift we are looking for – maintaining and creating green jobs and helping to protect the environment.

Transportation 4 American is a good organization on this issue. Its website has a lot of information on federal transportation policy. Check it out at www.T4America.

One Response

Jeff, we should make sure the feds include “clean construction” requirements in the federal transportation bill – the diesel engines used in construction spew out a lot of pollution unless they are the new engines or retrofitted with diesel particulate filters (DPFs).

And I’m with you all the way in reinvesting in Amtrak – the proposed highspeed Albany-NYC rail connection is a bit over-hyped, in my opinion, but let’s at least get service that’s ON TIME and bring back the cafe cars!

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